The interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and two officials with the federal public integrity unit all quit after the Justice Department ordered the charges against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped.
The interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and two officials with the federal public integrity unit all quit after the Justice Department ordered the charges against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped.
The interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and two officials with the federal public integrity unit all quit after the Justice Department ordered the charges against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped.
Manhattan’s U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned just days after she was ordered to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor.
Then, when Justice Department officials sought to transfer the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption cases, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
The resignations represent the most high-profile public resistance so far to President Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department.
The departures of the U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, and the officials who oversee the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, came in rapid succession on Thursday. Days earlier, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department had ordered Manhattan prosecutors to drop the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams.
The agency’s justification for dropping the case was explicitly political. The No. 2 official, Emil Bove III, argued that the investigation would prevent Mr. Adams from fully cooperating with Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Bove made a point of saying that Washington officials had not evaluated the strength of the evidence or the legal theory behind the case.
Mr. Bove, in accepting Ms. Sassoon’s resignation, informed her that the prosecutors who worked on the case were being placed on administrative leave, and would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department’s internal investigative arm. He told Ms. Sassoon both bodies would also evaluate her conduct.